Disability advocates sue over website accessibility delays

A disability rights group is suing two federal agencies over the delayed implementation of a rule requiring that state and local government websites be accessible to people with disabilities.

The National Federation of the Blind filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the U.S. Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services over the decision earlier this month to give governments another year to comply with a rule under the Americans with Disabilities Act. That rule would have required states and localities to ensure their websites meet various internationally recognized standards from the World Wide Web Consortium under Title II of the ADA.

In its suit, which also is filed against Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., NFB said DOJ and HHS “upended rules that had been years in the making and were carefully crafted to strike the proper balance between ensuring equal access for people with disabilities and feasibility for covered entities.”

NFB accuses DOJ and HHS of not following required procedure around the final rule’s public comment period in extending its implementation deadline, and said both agencies acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner when it made the regulation an Interim Final Rule, which would become effective immediately after publication and does not have a pre-publication public comment period.

“For over fifty years, our laws — specifically Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act — have promised blind Americans and other Americans with disabilities equal access to all areas of life, including digital spaces and services. Yet today this promise remains unfulfilled, and now our government is compounding the outrage by asking us to wait even longer,” Mark Riccobono, NFB’s president, said in a statement. “We will not wait. We will fight to ensure that the promise of America’s laws, and indeed its founding documents, finally becomes reality for blind and disabled Americans.”

The DOJ initially rolled out this regulation in 2024 during former President Joe Biden’s administration, under a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which required a public comment period before a final rule was issued. But just months before the original compliance deadline of April 24, 2026, for governments with populations over 50,000 people, the DOJ referred the rule to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs as an Interim Final Rule.

That set off a furious lobbying blitz as groups on both sides of the issue sought to influence the DOJ's final decision. Various government groups had argued that compliance was too costly and a drain on stretched staff resources, while disability groups had said the rule and the clarity it would bring were long overdue.

In the end, the DOJ announced in the Federal Register that governments would have an extra year to comply rigorous standards under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, known as WCAG , which means states and localities with populations above 50,000 people now have until April 26, 2027, to comply, while those with populations under 50,000 have until April 26, 2028, to comply. The delay left the plaintiffs in this case furious.

“For years, people with disabilities have fought for equal access to the digital services that increasingly shape everyday life — from healthcare and education to voting and public benefits,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of national legal organization Democracy Forward, which is helping represent NFB, said in a statement. “The Trump-Vance administration’s decision to abruptly delay these protections at the last minute is harmful, unlawful, and deeply disruptive for people who have already waited far too long for equal access. Disability rights are civil rights, and government agencies cannot simply ignore years of work, public input and legal obligations.”

NFB argued that the delay and changing of the rule type violated the Administrative Procedure Act, and so wants a judge to find DOJ and HHS’ actions to be illegal and vacate the Interim Final Rule. They also want the judge to declare all Interim Final Rules to be illegal under that law and award them legal fees.

The lawsuit accuses the DOJ and HHS of trying to “functionally repeal a policy consistent with the Trump Administration’s deregulatory agenda without the burden of a full rulemaking.” And while the suit says that DOJ officials realized that implementation was a far bigger burden than they had realized, especially for state and local governments worried about lawsuits in the event of non-compliance, it does not pay enough attention to the harms the disability community will continue to suffer if it is not implemented.

“[NFB and its members] relied on the Final Rules to fix an issue they regularly face: websites and apps that cannot be effectively used due to design barriers that make them inaccessible using access technology, like screen readers,” the lawsuit says. “Without relief, Plaintiff, its members, and the broader disability community will continue to face substantial barriers and uncertainty in accessing basic services, programs, and activities and participating equally in society.”